


Power and Control

by DesdemonaKaylose



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Fingerfucking, Functionist Universe (Transformers), M/M, Medical Kink, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, guro lite (tm), this is a sexy fic not a heavy torture fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-09 20:55:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16457060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: Rung is tougher than he looks, and the Functionist Council discovers a flaw in their approach to long term captivity and interrogation.





	Power and Control

**Author's Note:**

> Sweetspot dubcon for alt timeline Rung, because I know what to do with canonical bondage and this knowledge keeps me up at night. Thanks to Choko for providing several of the lines in this thing. This would not exist if you hadn't blown up my chat box with sexy torture content.

Crack.

Rung winces. Rung lifts his chin. Rung smiles.

 _Crack_.

There are patterns to the changing of the light. Even through the high curved windows with their frosted glass, the flicker of days has a shape and quality that changes with the unraveling of the calendar. The secret and threadbare pleasure of being planetside, even if the passage of the stars wheeling overhead is blanked out—life goes on, out there, with a breadth and power that none of Rung’s captors begin to comprehend.

In the aftermath, Nine of Twelve lets his fingertips rest against the domed glass. His fine joints are almost tauntingly delicate, while Rung’s nerve relay wires are strewn and sparking from the ragged casing of his own fingers. Rung hangs limply from his restraints, cooling systems venting hard. He can hear them whirling inside his body, desperate to catch up with his straining basic systems.

“You’re quiet today,” Nine of Twelve remarks, without looking back. “Are you perhaps unimpressed by today’s investigation?”

The circuits of Rung’s opened digits are numb, as cold and swollen as if they had been packed with fiberglass. His mouth twitches of its own accord. “Oh no,” he says, “by all means. Continue shredding dead circuitry. I’m sure you’ll learn so much.”

“We wouldn’t need investigate so invasively,” Nine of Twelve replies, “if you would only break your irrational silence.”

“I told you centuries ago,” Rung says, flashing his grim smile “I don’t know _what_ I’m for. Ruining my sensory receptors isn’t going to change that. Soon you won’t have anything left to toy with.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Nine of Twelve says. He turns his head, the pitiless glare of his single optic sweeping thoughtfully over Rung and his whirling, sparking body. “In any case, you raise an interesting point.”

“…I do,” Rung echoes, a bleak suspicion taking hold of him.

The inquisitor’s cloak flares from his shoulders as he turns from the window. Unlike most of the other council members, he is solid and heavy, easily built for holding down a thrashing body. Unlike the Convener, he doesn’t waste time on cruel little ironies. Unlike the Enactor, he doesn’t seem to the relish the tremble and scream of a long session. But he is ruthlessly efficient, absolutely unshakeable, and focused. It’s an unfortunate combination in a torturer, at least for the one being tortured.

Nine of Twelve passes him, only stopping long enough to reset the restraints. Against the hiss of machinery, Rung’s involuntary hiss of pain barely registers.

The sound of Nine’s steps pause at the far end of the room, as the door slides open with a soft _wssh_. “We must take care not to rob you of even your suffering,” he says.

The door slides closed again, after a moment.

With Nine, it’s difficult to determine whether he truly thinks Rung is willfully keeping his own secrets. Some of the others insist that Rung must know the truth, because what kind of mech doesn’t know his own function? What would be the _point_ of having an alt mode, if one didn’t know how to utilize it? Given that Nine never inflicts pain purely for the sake of inflicting pain—even the most excruciating twist and wrench reveals some moving part, some reflex action—Rung is tempted to conclude that Nine is of a different mindset. But then he’ll say things like _that_.

When Nine is gone, nothing remains but the slow changing of the light. This gleaming golden torture chamber is as hollow as a gutted chassis. Rung tunes out the tiny fractal sounds of his self-repair struggling to undo damage that can’t be undone, and returns to watching the muffled passage of the days. He tries not to think about what it _means_ that chunks of him seem to want to grow back, like organic flesh. It’s better if he doesn’t know.

The doctor arrives without warning, quite a while later. Rung has seen no one since Nine’s visit except of course for Sweep, who steadfastly refuses to speak to Rung but whose appearance is nonetheless the highlight of his week. They’ve never sent a _doctor_ in before; if it wasn’t for the stark red crosses on his arm and his toolbox, Rung wouldn’t have even thought to guess his purpose.

Reserved and brusque, the doctor does Rung the courtesy of introducing himself as Ratchet.

“You’re leaking,” is the only other thing he says to Rung, which he says with a severe tone that implies there are quite a lot of other things he’d like to say if he could.

For the first time in a long time, Rung pauses to take stock of his body. Among the scratches and dents, there’s a gash in his side from the year before. The place where they recently ripped his chest plate open has been slow-leaking for so long that he hardly notices anymore. The insides of his fingers are still exposed to the light. Ratchet reaches down to him and wipes fluid away from the wound, for a better look at the damage.

Rung shudders under the brisk but gentle touch, optics dimming and flickering. “Oh,” he says, as coolant dribbles from his chassis, “excuse me…”

Ratchet hesitates, and then visibly pulls himself together. “Forget about it,” he says, gruffly.

It’s rough and businesslike, but even so, it’s the first touch Rung has felt in so many hundreds of years that wasn’t meant to hurt him. His systems thrum desperately under his chest, heating his plates to the touch.

Ratchet is a good doctor, even if he’s only putting Rung back together so that someone else can take him apart again. If Ratchet notices the way his patient is leaning into his touch, he’s kind enough not to say anything about it.

He works without commentary, without preamble, patching and welding and rewiring until Rung is once again something resembling whole, and then he leaves. Rung offlines his optics and chases the last echoes of touch, biting his lip as it only seems to deepen the ache inside him.

He’s already looking forward to the next visit.

 

 

The centuries pass slowly here. Rung can only imagine how the world is changing beyond the dome of his prison, when all he has to mark the passage of time are the growing aches in his components and the flickering passage of light across the sky. Sometimes the Twelve talk about their plans within audial range; he could begin to piece together a snapshot of the world through the snap of their frustrations, the muted cattiness, the smug smooth congratulations. But only a snapshot.

When the telltale sound of the door shifts the air, Rung cannot help but brighten with anticipation. He twists his head, opening his mouth to greet Ratchet again, and finds to his unease that the doctor in the doorway is a different model entirely. He closes his mouth.

“Well hello there,” this new doctor says, strolling into the chamber as if he sees the brutal aftermath of centuries-long torment every day. “So you’re the little bot who’s got all these scope-heads in a fizzle.”

“Apparently,” Rung says. He watches the doctor carefully, perfectly cognizant of how much damage a professional with intimate knowledge of a life-support system could do to him.

The Inquisitor must have briefed the doctor on how to operate the restraint machinery. With an easy flick and spin of the dial, Rung is brought down, suspended over the floor as if laid out face-up on an unseen examination table. The doctor turns back to him, smiling, and cracks the knuckles of his big hands.

“I’m Pharma,” he says, “and you’re… Ring?”

Rung twists his mouth downward. “I'm Rung,” he says.

“Sure you are,” Pharma says. He comes across the floor with an easy gait, as Rung steels himself to whatever new horrors lie in store for him today. If Nine is outsourcing his investigation, it can’t be for a _softer_ approach. The first round of tests Rung was subjected to, a couple millennia ago—before the council had the power to hold him indefinitely like this—those had involved plenty of doctors, each of them tapping and twisting to see what piston met which starter. Just because they weren’t explicitly torturing him at that time doesn’t mean he remembers it any more fondly.

“Where’s Ratchet?” Rung asks, although he’s aware that even knowing his doctor’s name could be taken as a sign that he’s garnered too much comfort from those visits already.

“Oh, you were expecting him, were you?” Pharma says. “Sorry to be the one to tell you, but _that_ self-righteous gearstick has poked his fingers into other people’s business for the last time. He’s been executed! Exiled? One or the other.” A narrow-headed drill comes out of the toolbox, tip glinting. “Use your imagination.”

Rung would rather not, but unfortunately, there aren’t many other things he can do now. He watches the light prickling off the wicked edges of the drill.

“I think that given the familiarity you seem to have with him,” Rung says, carefully, “it’s fairly suspicious that you pretend not to know what happened to your colleague.”

Pharma twirls the drill and laughs. “Alright, you got me,” he says. “The fact of the matter is, I hear Ratchet got himself a bit of a _makeover.”_

Grinning, Pharma lifts his hand and mimes the clamp of a claw. Rung’s stomach overturns. For a doctor whose hands had saved so many lives, little could be crueler than empurata.

“Anyway, let’s not talk about _him,_ ” Pharma says, waving the whole thing off as easily as that. He steps closer, eyeing the various components of Rung’s anatomy with visible interest. “We’ve got so much ground to cover, as it is.”

At Rung’s side, he pauses and runs a thumb over the scarred metal of the chassis, following the gentle curve down to a hip-socket.

Rung, quietly steeled for something much worse, vents a startled breath.

“What a delicate little thing you are,” Pharma says, brightly, stroking the ball of Rung’s hip. His finger traces down along the socket, inward, into the vulnerable crux. The pain sensors there give a hiccup of confused transmissions, sparking muddied data.

“I—” Rung starts to say, but he’s cut off by sight of Pharma twirling the drill up into his palm. It glitters like a morning star against the pale ceiling.

“Not even a table,” the doctor says, _tsk_ ing vaguely at the empty chamber. “Here,” he says, reaching for Rung’s faceplate, “hold this.”

With Rung’s chin in hand, he forces the slender handle of the drill between Rung’s denta. The thing tastes of coolant and fuel, not quite scrubbed off. After some thousand years in this place, Rung is no stranger to indignity, but it still smarts. The moment Pharma lets go, he turns his head and spits the thing onto the floor.

Pharma frowns at him. “Now don’t be _difficult_. I can’t abide difficult patients.” He scoops up the tool and takes Rung hard by the chin again, one thumb forcing denta to part. His hand easily engulfs Rung’s head. His grip is too strong—even as Rung strains to turn his head away, Pharma keeps him in place. The flat of the thumb slides over his glossa, thick and cool.

“Don’t try that again,” Pharma says, mildly, “or I’ll disable your spinal strut until I’m done.”

Reluctantly, Rung accepts the bit back into his mouth. A little mobility is better than no mobility. A little bit of mobility is all he’s had for centuries, and he’s loathe to give it up. The taste of surgical grade metal bites his tongue.

Satisfied, Pharma goes back to fingering the seams of Rung’s body. He draws a line from the joint of Rung’s shoulder to the collar of his chassis, where he sinks his fingers down underneath the plate. He strokes the cords of Rung’s neck, following their arch all the way from the sheltered place beneath the chest plate up, slowly, to the jaw of his faceplate. His touches build a whisper of a charge underneath them, even as Rung grimaces around the thing in his mouth.

“You need a realignment,” Pharma says, “and some of these cords replaced. And it looks like there’s damage to your spark casing but—hmm, let’s get a closer look, shall we?”

Rung attempts to tell him the casing is fine, actually, the dents are only cosmetic—he thinks the council is not quite desperate enough yet to start tearing out bites of his casing—but all that comes out of his mouth is an incomprehensible string of sounds.

“Nnngh,” Rung manages, for all the good it does him.

Pharma presses down on either side of the battered chest plate and forces it open, exposing the frame underneath. Rung’s hands make ragged fists, damaged metal creaking under the pressure.

“I’ve rarely seen a spark this exposed,” Pharma says, rapping his knuckle on the plate glass. It echoes, a tone almost too low to hear, inside of Rung. “Hm. That’s thicker casing than I thought. It’s _awfully_ bright, in there.”

His hand cups the curve of the casing, rubbing slow and leisurely as he inspects the whole apparatus. Rung twitches, instinctively trying to pull back from the overly familiar touch, and Pharma’s grin ticks up. He runs a finger around the rim of the casing, circling it with deliberate purpose, and a faint low hum rises from the metal as Rung vents hard.

“I can almost see it in there,” Pharma says, as charge steadily builds under his circling fingertip. “I could almost touch it. Wouldn’t that be something? To get my hands on a thing like that. You’d be able to feel it, when I took you into my hand. It would kill you of course, and we can’t have that. But still, what an _experience_.”

The silvery tone is growing stronger in the air, and Rung is all but glowing with charge, pulling against the unforgiving restraints. It’s dizzying—he wants it to stop and he wants more of it, at the same time, without relief. _Cognitive dissonance,_ he thinks, with the part of his mind that isn’t crackling hungry static.

All at once the circle breaks. Pharma lifts his hand, letting it hover in the air as the tone dies away. Rung sags, hot and buzzing and dizzied. Ghost stimulus throbs in his sensors.

“Well that’s _interesting_ ,” Pharma says, drinking in the full spectacle below him. His hand splays flat against the casing glass, swallowing its light. “Why don’t we take a look under the hood,” he says, and plucks his drill from between Rung’s denta.

“—Don’t,” Rung says, the moment the weight is off of his sore mouth. “There’s nothing wrong there.”

“Neglecting your health.” Pharma _tsks_ at him, tapping the glass gently. “There could be a rust infection under this clumsy patch job. I wouldn’t trust _Ratchet_ to clean a wound this delicate. You’re very lucky you have me now, instead of that second rate strut-saw.”

The drill bit touches down against something Rung can’t see. Precisely and effortlessly, Pharma takes apart his plating, stripping him down to the bare protoform beneath. It doesn’t hurt. Or it hurts a little, but Rung is so numb to it now that he barely notices. The sensation of cool air against his insides is taking up all his processing power, the strange and squirmy feeling of total vulnerability. He’s been here before, but never with someone looking at him like _that._ Pharma threads his fingers through fuel lines, brushing the hard outline of a tank somewhere underneath, and Rung jolts.

“Please don’t touch me like that,” he manages, denta gritted.

Pharma grins, and his fingers push deeper, forcing down between the spark case and the mass of Rung’s life supports, cords and wires and tubes that carry the most essential forces through his frame. A living body is a miracle. He’s always thought that—it’s one of the few certainties in his long and flickering life—but this is the first time it’s struck him as equally terrible and miraculous.

“Mmm, you’re heating up,” Pharma remarks, wrist deep now, fingers curling and stroking inside of Rung. “You usually get that from a premature ignition, which means your major line may not be marked together.”

Rung’s voice hitches in static, as a fingertip strokes some delicate thing that has never before felt foreign hands. He turns his head.

“ _Or_ ,” Pharma adds leaning in, “you actually like being touched like this. Either’s good for me, really.”

Rung shoots the doctor a searing glare. Pharma chuckles and withdraws.

“Well you’re rust free, you’ll be relieved to hear,” he says, shaking out his hand. “We’ll just close you up and tune some of those joints. Replace those dead nerve endings. You’ll be good as new. Mint condition even. Hold this.”

The stem of the drill forces its way into Rung again, pinning his glossa beneath its bar. He has half a mind to spit it out again but—his everything aches for more of that charge, when before it only ached for the familiar comfort of a medical exam—

“Now there’s several sensitive areas that need tuning,” Pharma says, trailing a finger over the furnace-hot cover of Rung’s interface panel. “So try not to get too excited.”

 

 

Although the investigation is technically the province of Nine, the Inquisitor, Rung’s chamber has seen the visitation of several other councilmech over the years, whenever the fancy takes them. Other than Nine, One of Twelve is by far his most frequent caller.

From the heavy swish of cloth, Rung knows it’s One of Twelve long before the council member enters his line of sight. The Convener prefers his belongings rich and elegant to the point of vanity. Certainly, Rung thinks, past the point of functional utility. Perhaps that’s why he takes such a perverse interest in an _ornament._ Rung presses his lips into a mirthless smile.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure,” he says, “oh great and _necessary_ Convener?”

“To what indeed?” One of Twelve replies, with a purr in his voice that immediately sets Rung’s denta on edge.

The glowing circle of his eye fixes on Rung as he comes round the chamber, hands folded behind his back. The embroidered edge of his mantel sweeps the floor; his gaze never leaves Rung.

“Don’t you look fresh,” One of Twelve says, as he finally comes to a stop just within reach. “My my. Did you enjoy your little spa day?”

“Your medical staff appears to be riddled with deranged malpractice,” Rung says, “but then I suppose it would have to be, working for you.”

“Oh, under the right circumstances, a certain amount of sanctioned leeway can yield worthwhile results. The Functionist Council does not _neglect_ the supervision of its vassals. We know all things under our survey.”

Distaste twists the corner of Rung’s mouth. “I do wonder if your delusions of godhood are an affectation, or a genuine affliction.”

“The only _delusions_ here are your delusions of autonomy,” One of Twelve says, brushing him off with uncharacteristic, unsettling ease. “In fact, I think perhaps we’ve allowed you to flourish too long within your misery. You’ve grown willful. Unresponsive.”

One of Twelve lifts his hand. Rung flinches away from it, turning his faceplate, but it isn’t a blow that lands across him. It’s only the gentle cup of a hand, and the slow stroke of a thumb. Rung stiffens. The motion is soft, soothing, the perfect paradoxym of comfort.

“We have heard some very interesting reports,” One of Twelve remarks. “Medical reports, you might say.”

Rung eyes him warily.

“Nine of Twelve has suggested there may be a sort of numb comfort in perfect agony,” One says. “Perhaps you require a different kind of… retuning.”

Terrible certainty crashes over Rung, gripping him like the fist of a maximus. “Whatever you’re thinking,” he says, “I entreat you to reconsider. Even you aren’t so far gone as to—”

“Do you think there is something _heterodox_ about what we do here?” One of Twelve asks, and his grip for the barest moment becomes viselike. Rung’s faceplate creaks. Then he relaxes. “But I can’t expect a useless thing like you to understand the burden of being born to a divine station, can I? Duty is to you, I expect, a mere trifle.”

One of Twelve traces the edge of Rung’s mouth with his thumb, and Rung shudders under the lightness of his touch. His lips part. Although there is no expression to read, Rung can feel the way One pauses for the barest second, surprised, and then how he pushes his advantage. The fingertip presses in, pinning glossa, and holds open Rung’s mouth as the councilmech inspects him.

As long as he can remember, Rung’s only real power in this world has been his words. Perhaps that’s why everyone lately seems to want him mute. Would it be worth breaking his denta to bite down now?

Probably not. He’s not certain the Council would consider the damage worth repairing.

One of Twelve caresses Rung with the hand that isn’t holding him open. At the seam where Rung’s faceplate meets helm, the sensors are so fine and sensitive that they light up every relay along his spinal strut with echoes of pleasure, and he cannot help but lean into the touch.

His optics flicker.

“Oh,” One of Twelve says, “you _are_ receptive, aren’t you. Perhaps you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be cosseted like this. Or did you ever know? A forgettable thing like you…”

Rung wrenches free of the councilmech’s grip, the cords of his neck straining. “Get your hands off me,” he spits.

“You’re giving _orders_ now?” One of Twelve says, “You? A living affront to the will of Primus?”

“I am an _autonomous sentient being_ ,” Rung says sharply, “no matter what your ilk think of me.”

“ _Autonomous_ ,” One of Twelve mocks. His dead-eyed optic burns into Rung, as he reaches out again. “Strung up and stretched out for a millennium, in a single room, taken apart and reassembled at the whim of your keeper. Oh yes.”

One’s hand slips down the length of Rung’s chestplate, fingers waking and abandoning trails of hungry sensors as they go. Charge ripples in his wake. Underneath the scraped and battered plates of Rung’s chassis, his whole being shivers with indiscriminate hunger.

The councilmech is wrong to presume Rung’s ignorance in these things. He knows plenty about the kind of delicate attention that lights up a frame from top to bottom. Once upon a time, before he was dragged into this precise and glittering cage, there had been any number of bots who found him pleasant and unobjectionable enough for a casual rendezvous. When they could remember his name, anyway. The joy and satisfaction of being wanted, even if only briefly, was another thing he had lost, being held here.

“You’re—” Rung vents hard, “doing something you can’t undo—”

The hand slips beneath him, gently tracing the corners of his interface panel. Rung struggles not to let it snap open, a wretched moan bubbling through his vocalizer. One of Twelve keeps one hand on Rung’s faceplate, cupping it as if he is guiding a loved one out of a nightmare, a reassuring presence that promises safety and affection and it un _does_ Rung, it makes him ache with longing.

Lubricant dribbles through the seam of his interface panel, slicking the finger that passes over it.

“Disgusting,” One of Twelve says, as his fingers grow slicker and slicker. He draws himself closer to Rung, the cloth of his mantel almost brushing Rung’s scratched chestplate, one hand still cupping the back of Rung’s helm.

Rung jerks up into the fingertip swirling slick circles. “Hh… ah.”

“Look at you,” One of Twelve says, his single optic flaring with something that might be desire. “This is pathetic.”

It’s been so long since he felt anything that wasn’t pain. His fresh nerves, scraped of dead circuitry and patched down to the finest connection, are tender and not yet broken of their ability to trust.

“Open your panel for us,” One of Twelve says, “there’s a good bot.”

There’s a snap as the cover disengages, and cool air rushes over the heated mesh. Rung trembles and bucks into the digit that prods him, testing his wetness, the give of his valve.

There is something dark and voracious in the councilmech’s voice as he says, “Compliance, at _last_.”

“This,” Rung mutters, “this is—despicable, un _ethical_ —”

He breaks off into a pitching moan as One of Twelve shoves three digits into his valve, down to the last joint. Lubricant drips down One’s hand, mesh twitching and throbbing around his fingers.

“Mmmph,” Rung manages, denta buried in his bottom lip. Digits wiggle inside of him.

“Gorgeous rigging,” One says, as he smoothes his hand over the curve of Rung’s helm, “that’s what the good doctor said. _Gorgeous rigging, on the inside_. Perhaps you were built for this, Rung of the Pious Pools. For the pleasure of your betters.”

Rung is almost certain that the Twelve believe their own propaganda about interfacing—that it’s unnatural, useless, and at best a dangerous infection spread to their race from lesser organic species. And yet the tightness he’s being held with, the slight tremble, that can only be excitement. If he could make himself form words, he’d point of the hypocrisy of everything happening here.

But when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is a strangled- “H-harder…”

One’s optic flares, burning yellow and disastrous as a supernova.

Rung whirrs and all but vents _steam_ as One of Twelve handfucks his valve. It’s thick enough that it’s straining him to accommodate, but it’s not _deep_ enough. Jumbled pleas spill out of his mouth. He’s desperate to feel the blunt strike of a spike against his ceiling node, to be totally filled, to—

The overload tears through him without warning, charge bursting inside his spark chamber, transfluid spilling down One’s wrist. He whimpers, twisting as the digits inside him keep pumping, the pressure on his blown sensors so intense that he can’t parse pleasure from pain. It’s good. It’s terrible. It would kill him, but he half wants to go again.

One of Twelve withdraws at last, a trail of transfluid stringing between Rung’s soaked valve and his fingers. He steps back, head tilted, taking in his work with expressionless fixation. Rung makes a small, exhausted sound, and slumps.

Ghost data swirls through him, buzzing and glowing.

One of Twelve considers his slicked fingers for a moment, rubbing them thoughtfully together, before forcing them against Rung’s mouth. They push in, sliding over his glossa, warm and tasting of heady, unchecked power. Rung glares hazily at him.

“The famous no one, in all his glory,” One of Twelve purrs, as fluid smears Rung’s lips. “All hail.”

 

The next time anyone tries this, they are very _careful_ not to let their plaything overload.

**Author's Note:**

> Pharma: my lords, I was doing routine inspection on the prisoner and you won’t believe it, he got MAD horny, do you BELIEVE it?? I bet he was macking on my darling Ratchet The Traitor, I mean he was 50% lubricant when I was done with him  
> 9 of 12: why are you in my office


End file.
